Where We Go From Here
by Nanrz
Summary: -UPDATED-We find Gamzee gathering the corpses of the fallen trolls. But Nepeta isn't among them. Will she also fall to the hands of his inner rage? Or will she be the instrument to quieting his inner Subjuggulator once and for all?
1. Fallen Troll

Blood was everywhere.

Green.

Nasty, drying green.

He hated it.

He loved it.

A long, thin finger stretched out, dragging the nail through the thick pool that had formed by her head. Thrumming through his veins was an aching, a longing, a need.

Slowly, he brought his finger to his mouth, tasting the color. A shudder coursed through him and he spat.

"Wrong green," he rasped. "Wrong MOTHERFUCKING green."

He finished dragging Sollux's corpse next to Feferi's, squinting one eye as he arranged them. Something was missing. With a spasm of tenderness he folded their hands together over a slightly crumpled horn.

"Honk," he whispered quietly, then stood, straightening out a long, lanky body. Head tilted to the side, his tongue subconsciously licking at the blood around his lips. He nibbled absentmindly at one corner of his mouth as he surveyed his work. Equius was placed nearest to the corner of one wall, next to a broken Aradiabot. Tavros followed, slightly sitting up to keep his horns from hitting the other bodies. Next was Vriska, her wings curled in upon themselves like freshly-hatched butterfly wings. Eridan, both halves of his body reunited, his hands upon his chest clasping the broken wand, was next to her. Next was Feferi, her hair carefully arranged as a curling frame around her upper body. At the end of the row he had placed Sollux. Gamzee crouched down, fiddling with the pants legs of some of the bodies.

Finally, finally, finally, everyone was together. The word 'finally' echoed in his brain, twisting upon itself until Gamzee reached into his pocket and honked a broken horn, its noise muffled now that it had been nearly bent in half, to help clear his muddled thoughts.

Standing in a fluid motion, he prowled over to where he had placed Nepeta. As he stood there, looking over her prone form, he thought back to a few hours ago.

He stood there, standing over Equius's corpse, still with a quickly fading disbelief. He shook himself like a woofbeast, trying again to fight the overwhelming urge to kill. He could feel it, pulsing in his veins, throbbing in his skull. He could almost taste it, the phantom sticky warmth as it tried to pull him back into madness.

Faintly, so soft it barely disturbed the dank air around him, he heard the sound of a vent opening somewhere above his head. He turned just in time to see Nepeta Leijon pouncing, claws extended and a furious growl emitting her throat. He caught her wrist as it came towards his face, snapping it with the force of his grip but not being able to stop its momentum. He felt only pressure as the blades sliced three neat lines into his face. He caught the tangy sharpness of his blood as it started to seep through his wounds. As Nepeta fell, he let go of her wrist, pulled her close around the shoulders, quickly brought up a club, and brought it against the back of her head, knocking her unconscious. He then carried her to one of the large, empty hallways and lay her down on some blankets that were piled there. Evidence that someone had tried sleeping far away from Karkat and his incessant orders to not, for any reason, sleep. He had set her down carefully and left, and was only now checking on her.

He'd wanted everyone's bodies together.

In the back of his mind something was screaming, almost intelligibly, that he needed to kill the rest, that they would kill him if he didn't kill them first. He shook his head again and honked his near silent horn a few times, to settle the subjuggulating urges. He was feeling too many emotions at once, a cacophony, and he knew that the multitude of it had begun to make his body shake. A small, steady tremor.

The pangs of sopor loss.

Remorse.

Hunger.

Guilt.

Nausea.

Dizziness.

Depression.

Happiness.

Euphoria.

Desire.

A need to kill.

They all mixed together in a gut-churning noise that made it hard to breathe, to move.

It was as if his entire being was at war with itself. He didn't know how much longer he was going to last against them.

He turned to face the corpses and Nepeta's prone form. Something niggled faintly in the back of his mind. It wasn't accompanied with the sticky, mind-honey warmth the voices had, so he didn't try to push it away. Gamzee let the thought dictate his actions, moving on autopilot. He lifted Nepeta onto his shoulder, her face pressed against his neck and her body curled in towards his chest. With the other arm he gathered all the clean blankets and lay them over her. He then turned and shuffled to his respiteblock, keeping one hand free should he need it. Turns out he really did. Upon opening the door to his respiteblock he found that the floor was covered in streaks of multi-colored blood and the wrenched apart remains of several horns. He shoved the horn bits out of his path with one long foot, moving slowly and carefully until he came to the furthermost corner of his room. Here he gingerly lay Nepeta down, blankets squished up under and around her to form a better pile. He took one and set it over her, tucking one edge under her chin.

Finished, he spun to face his destroyed room. For a moment he merely stood there, fighting between cleaning it and wrecking it further. He decided on both. First he took up a few blue-stained towels, rinsed them, and set to wiping off the blood that had gotten everywhere. He vaguely remembered coming in here earlier and, using the blood on his hands, "decorating" his room in crazed triumph. Now the sight of it made him sad and even more sick to his stomach.

After he finished cleaning up the blood, he took all the broken pieces of horns, furniture, and various unknown bits he found here and there, and made a pile. He then opened the trash chute set into the wall by the door and began throwing everything away. But as he did this he ripped each item into even smaller pieces. This small scale destruction quieted the sinister urging that had begun to drum a erratic rhythm into the base of his skull. It was as he neared the end of the pile that he heard her begin to grumble and shift on her heap of blankets.

He slowly inched his way back towards her, eyes alert to each sluggish movement.

What would she do when she saw him?

Would she attack him again?

Would he fight back if she did?

The uncertainty, the unknowing, both frightened and excited him.


	2. Torment

Everything was dark. She was clawing through the darkness, could feel it wrapping itself around her claws, her wrists, her ankles. Her head was screaming in pain. Where was everyone? She tried to shout, but the words stuck like glue in her throat.

'EQUIUS?'

The name echoed dimly in her mind, unfamiliar at first but growing sharper with recognition. Her moirail. Where was he? Where was Karkat, Terezi, Feferi? She would even welcome the sound of Vriska's shrill eightfold laughter. But all she could hear was the sound of her blood rushing in her ears, and Equius's name, sounding more lost and forlorn each time it resounded across her mind.

Her ears popped, and she knew that she was conscious once again. Not yet wanting to open her eyes, she shifted around, taking stock on what was hurt, and how badly. Her right wrist -OWOWOWOW- was broken. The shoulder it was attached to felt awful, but didn't feel out of socket or pulled. Her lower back ached, and the back of her head hurt sharply. Most likely a shallow cut with a massive bruise surrounding it. She sent a sad, silent thanks to her lusus for teaching her how to pay attention to her body and all its parts, an essential tool for a great huntress. Her heart gave a twinge at the thought of her companion, hunter and guardian, oldest friend. She twitched her head in a semblance of a shake. Now wasn't the time to think about the past.

She slowly blinked her eyes open, letting them adjust in the low, dim light.

The first thing that she saw was that there was remnants of blood. Everywhere. She could see it, smell it, taste it. It coated her tongue like ash, invaded her nose and clung no matter how shallowly she tried to breathe. What was worse was that it was different colors. She could see dark yellow, blues both deep and bright, dark brown, light purples. She wanted to bolt, to claw through the walls to escape the homage to carnage. Instead, she forced herself to lay still, to breathe. She quickly glanced away from the faintly multicolored walls, looking at something else, anything else. She saw a desk, cracked straight in half. A chair lay crunched nearby, almost unrecognizable. There were bits of what was probably more furniture, but they were so destroyed she couldn't make out anything specific. The word "HONK" and a clown face ":o)" decorated everything, floor to ceiling.

'I'm in Gamzee's room...' She realized, and tensed up instinctively. Her hunter's senses narrowed into razor sharp focus, and she slowly turned her head to the left. There, looking bloody, crazy, and more than a little terrifying, the thing that murdered her moirail was making his slow, loping way towards her. She let out a low, even growl. She knew she was too injured to attack, but she'd be damned if she left him get anywhere near her.

Gamzee came to a stop upon hearing the steady growl emanating from the injured troll. He reached a slow hand up to his face and began worrying at the lowest edge of his scratches, which had begun to scab. He put his other hand in his pocket to hold the horn, and waited. He couldn't help but shift his weight from one leg to the other, his frayed emotions swinging from concerned to angry and back again. He squeezed the ball end of the horn every two weight shifts, and looked steadily at the dark metal floor.

Nepeta watched him with careful, narrowed eyes. Her ears pricked at the small honks coming from his pocket. What was he doing? Shifting herself so that she could swipe with her good arm if need be, she cleared her throat. It burned horribly from being dry, and she had to swallow a few times before she could speak.

"What's in your pocket, murderer?" She drew her eyebrows together in a look of stern anger for when he finally looked at her. It took a surprisingly long time. She could hear the squeaks coming from his pants, an almost constant beat. He would frown as though furious, then immediately it would morph into an almost pitiful look of sadness and worry. She began watching him as though he was prey, catching each minute movement. Slowly, she came to a confused understanding. 'I know those movements..they're like when a hoofbeast gets cornered. That is so AGGRAVATING! How DARE he look so upset! He MURDERED everyone! HE MURDERED EQUIUS!' She let out a loud, furious roar and began screaming at him.

"What? What the hell is wrong with you? You should be ashamed of yourself! **We** trusted you! **EQUIUS** trusted you! **I trusted you!** You murdered everyone! Why would you do that? Why? You killed Equius! HOW COULD YOU DO THAT? YOU MURDERED ALL OF YOUR FRIENDS! FRIENDS YOU'VE KNOWN FOR SWEEPS! THEY DIDN'T DO ANYTHING TO YOU! YOU MURDERED HIM! FOR NO REASON! HOW COULD YOU? HOW **DARE** YOU!? YOU **MURDERED** MY **MOIRAIL**! I SHOULD **KILL** YOU! **YOU SHOULD BE DEAD!**"

She began swiping ineffectively at him as the tears began rolling down her cheeks. She didn't dare to get close due to his superior strength, but she needed to move in some way to express her rage, her despair. She sobbed for all the words that filled her mind but got stuck in her throat. Eventually she just put her face to her knees and keened, all the sadness and anger pouring out of her as she howled in anguish.

Gamzee took a half step forward before he could stop himself. He couldn't hear anything but her tear-filled screams, see anything but the way each jagged sob racked through her tiny frame. He never knew that someone so small could be so loud. He could feel his tattered heart crack into shards as he listened. Knowing that this strong huntress in front of him had been reduced to a sobbing puddle and it was his fault struck him to the core. If he hadn't snapped this wouldn't have happened.

His fault, his fault, his fault.

Slowly, he walked to her, crouching next to the pile of blankets. He picked at a rip in his pants, trying to find something to say that didn't sound like a jumble of nonsense the way everything did in his head.

"Nepeta...I..."

He didn't get any farther. The minute he spoke her head snapped up, eyes burning even as fresh tears fell. Like the crack of a whip she pulled back her good arm and punched him in the side of the head. As he rocked back, dazed from the unexpected blow, she scrambled to her feet. He stood as well, and backed up to avoid another hit. She marched slowly to the door, petite body unyielding as stone. Right before she opened the door to leave, she turned to face him. Gamzee wanted to melt into the wall under the force of her glare. They were like two black pieces of coal, and he forced himself not to quell under the heat. She spoke in a whisper, knowing that he could hear her from that distance just as she could.

"Stay out of my sight, Gamzee. Never come near me again. Or I swear on my moirail's grave, I will kill you."

He saw her leave, saw the door slide shut again. To him, he only stood there for a few minutes, brain failing at an attempt to process. The girl he had respected, the fierce warrior, the amazon-dwelling huntress, the adorable little chika that was always drawing on the walls, hated him with a passion he understood only abstractly. He had never felt that strongly about anything, the sopor always leaving him numb and foggy, the demon inside him giving him only senseless rage. He didn't know how to feel anything, not in the normal way. But as he watched the door, knowing he could never talk to her, never sneak up behind her to steal the piece of chalk as she doodled, he felt a deep sadness that made his knees buckle and his chest burn.

Suddenly, Karkat was in front of him, admonishing him for disappearing. He barely heard the warning to keep clear of Kanaya for now, the admonition for not taking care of his face. Distantly he felt the wet towel as Karkat cleaned off his wound, wiping off what remained of his juggalo paint. He let the angrily muttering troll pull his tired body onto the blankets, absently tugging Karkat against his chest as he burrowed close. Long after Karkat was asleep Gamzee lay there, staring at his sleeping moirail's face. No matter how long he looked he saw only hers, tight and furious.

He would keep his distance, or try to. He didn't know how long he could stand the unfamiliar emotions.

In the end, he might put himself in front of her, to have her kill him and end the torment his mind and heart were putting him through.


	3. Sup

Nepeta slinked out of bed at the rap of a single knock at her door. She considered being mad, seeing as she was never up before noon, but decided it took too much actual caring to do so. She rarely attempted to feel anything nowadays, allowing the feeling of depressed remorse float like a heavy stone in her heart. 'Like it even matters what time it is on this stupid rock, anyway.' She thought to herself, rubbing one red-rimmed eye as she opened the door to her rooms.

"N~yeah, wassit?" She yawned, her slightly elongated canines glinting in the dull light of the hallway.

"Yo. The loud fuck said you were less than chill. Wanna chat?"

Nepeta tilted her head and frowned at the human boy standing at her door. He was the red one, Dave. She'd never spoken to him other than greeting him the first day he and the girl had showed up.

That day...

She gave an involuntary bristle at the memory, her tail fluffing out. Giving a noncommittal shrug she turned, leaving the door open. She hopped back onto a large circular bed that took up the entire back corner of her room and curled into a tight ball, her tail laying over one small knee.

Dave raised an eyebrow and entered, shutting the door behind him. He wasn't really sure what good he would do here, but if it got Karkat away from him for a few hours, he'd bite. He picked his way over the clothes and jackets strewn about the floor and settled himself on the floor in front of the bed, leaning his back against it and staring at the messy room. He let his mind drift while the cat girl stayed mute, going back to earlier that day.

* * *

><p>"HEY. FUCKHEAD."<p>

Dave sighed inwardly, and turned to give Karkat a cool, impassive stare through his shades.

"Sup?"

"DON'T GIVE ME THAT 'COOLKID' BULLSHIT, STRIDER. DO YOU KNOW HOW FUCKING IRRITATING THAT IS, HEARING THAT USELESS WORD EVERY TIME SOMEONE GREETS YOU? IT TAKES LESS THAN A BLIP IN A THINKPAN TO USE SUCH A RIDICULOUS WORD. I REALIZE THAT YOUR ABNORMALLY SMALL THINKPAN LIMITS YOUR ALREADY DISMAL VOCABULARY, BUT YOU REALLY SHOULD THINK ABOUT BEATING YOURSELF WITH A DICTIONARY IN HOPES OF ABSORBING SOME BETTER GREETINGS."

Dave merely shifted his weight and tilted his head down towards the short, infuriating troll. He raised a single blonde eyebrow, ironically relishing the look it received. He loved how much that one move always pissed the little shit off.

"Do you think you could get to the point, shorty?"

Karkat bristled at the insult, but surprisingly merely swallowed back the onslaught of angry retorts and stepped closer, lowering his voice.

"Look, I hate you, ok? And I'm glad it's mutual. But, I need you to talk to Nepeta. Over there, see? The one with the tail? Believe it or not, she didn't used to look so goddamned melancholy all the fucking time."

They both turned their heads in unison to glance over at her, sitting at her computer desk with her head in her hand, staring listlessly at her blinking screen.

"She used to be so fucking happy and bouncy that it made me want to beat my head against the wall. While I'm glad she's not flushing red for me anymore, I... seeing her this sad...It just..."

Karkat trailed off, black eyes softening as he took in his friend's new demeanor. Dave was almost dumbstruck at the look of genuine concern on Karkat's face. For this to make this tiny fuck look so freakishly worried and sad…

Dave felt the seriousness of the request settle on his shoulders like a second cape. He nodded, and stepped back.

"I'll try."

With that, he'd spent the next hour chatting with the other trolls, to get a sense of the differences between then and now. Everyone had said nearly the same as Karkat, except Terezi. She had known her better from having role-played with her frequently in the past. He'd left her for last, meeting in her room as usual. The Mayor was absent, and he took advantage of this, curling up together on her bed, the bony body settled against him where he could see her face. Even with being blind for such a long time, she still had a multitude of expressions that made talking with her much easier. He nuzzled one sharp shoulder as she thought about it, and settled his chin on it when she finally answered.

"She was...very passionate. I remember that the most. When she would come back from hunting, she would be so excited, and yet bizarrely sad that she had to kill something to survive. Role-playing with her was the most... intense experience. You know when you feel so happy it's like having one of those 'balloons' you told me about stuffed in your chest? She felt that way all the time, about everything. It was like she felt everything at once. I used to wonder if maybe one day she was going to just explode from it all and that would be the end of her. Now...now she's just...empty. A shell."

She looked near tears, and he hugged her tightly against him the way she liked. She gave him a small smile, and continued.

"It's like she's already gone, and her body just hasn't realized it. She's just...existing. I'm worried about her, so worried, but I can't do anything. What do you say to someone who's lost their moirail? That person that knew you inside and out, more than anyone in the world? Your other half? I never had that...I do now, of course," she nuzzled the side of his head and gave a goofy smile, "but I haven't lost you. I'm just...floundering. Some Seer of Mind I am, can't even see how to help her."

The tears began falling in earnest at this, and he spent the next few hours cheering her up.

Now, armed with an idea of what to do, he sat on the floor of Nepeta's room and waited. He was good at that, waiting for the right moment. Sure enough, she began talking, her voice a whisper. He sat silent and listened.

"It's my fault. Not for killing him... that's **his** fault. But, he told me he was going to look for him, and I just let him go. Why did I let him go? I should've made him stay, should've told him my tail was malfunctioning, I should've done...something. It's all my fault, and now there's a hole in my life where he used to fit and I feel like there's an asteroid in my chest and I just..."

As she spoke, her whisper became hoarse as her voice thickened with guilt. She trailed off and started sobbing. Loud, aching sobs, the kind that raked across you with ice-cold claws. Dave wasn't sure what to do at this point. Terezi just lets them fall without a sound, he didn't know what to do with such...anguish. Such raw emotion. Every sob raked across him in a way that made his heart twinge, then ache, then finally lurch so hard that pulled him from the floor to the bed, torn between reaching for her and fleeing from the room, the asteroid, the whole damn timeline altogether.

He sat there, close but still far enough away that he would have to reach. He sat and heard the sobs, the sound of a raw, gaping, unhealed wound. Watched her take shuddering gasps, the way her shoulders hunched inward as though trying to make her disappear into herself. Before he knew it he'd pulled her tight against him, silent and yet yearning to say something, anything that would make her feel better. Anything to close that awful, god fucking awful, hole in her heart. She clung to his shirt and sobbed, until the tears were long gone and all she could do was shiver against him. After almost two hours, she pulled away from him, finally looked at him.

"I'm sorry."

He rubbed the back of her hand gently and gave a quirk of a smile.

"No big."

From that moment on, he came to see her every day, just to listen to her, hold her, distract her. After a few months, they began watching movies, all kinds. She would shout at the screen when the characters did something stupid, he would throw popcorn at their faces to make her laugh. It became routine, something she could look forward to when despair beckoned with thorny claws in the depths of the night.

It was another three months before she started to realize that the ache in her chest had faded.


	4. Observing

He found solace in destruction during the first few months. He kept to his room, alternately building and destroying furniture that Karkat kept alchemizing for him. He would go a few days without ever feeling even a tingle from the darker corners of his mind, only to spend an entire week ripping everything to shreds with his bare hands, snarling and near foaming at the mouth. During these times, Karkat would keep everyone in a different part of the asteroid, growling assurances and transportalizing Gamzee food at regular intervals. He still vividly remembered the first time he tried to 'shoosh-pap' him during these times.

Karkat heard a fractured, guttural roar echo down the hallways into the Computer Room. Swearing loudly, he pulled himself out of his chair and sprinted towards Gamzee's room, the sound of his shoes hitting the metal floor reverberating through him. He wrenched open the door, only to meet a bloodied fist to his nose. He stumbled backwards and cracked his skull into the opposite wall, could feel shaking hands pin him to it even as the blood began to flood the bottom half of his face. He opened his eyes to see Gamzee's crazed, too-wide grin, his pupils pinpoints in his ebony-purple eyes. Somehow, the fact that he hadn't worn the make-up since that first night Karkat had found him, made it even scarier. Swallowing past the giant lump of fear in his throat, he began snarling soft words, his fingers brushing Gamzee's curled grip with small 'shoosh'es. In what was most likely a few minutes, yet felt like eternity, he watched as his moirail calmed, watched as the blind rage and anger turned to fear, worry, and self-hatred. He ignored Gamzee's broken apologies, detangled himself, and simply ushered his friend back into his room.

After that, Gamzee had made him promise to not come into his room when he was like that, to just let it run its course. So Karkat made sure everyone else stayed away as well.

Four months passed this way, the quiet weeks spanning longer and longer than the crazed ones. After a while, Gamzee came out of his room and began wandering the halls, making sure he was never in the same area as either Nepeta or Kanaya. Karkat had told him what had happened up on the outer deck when he'd taken Sollux's body, and how it was better to just stay away from her for the next year or so.

So, he watched. He lay above the Computer Room, the Eating Room, and Lower Lab in the air ducts, and watched them interact with each other. Mostly, he watched HER. Watched as she slowly dealt from the trauma he had unknowingly inflicted. By the time a year had nearly passed, he could tell you which hand she used to push back the slightly-curled bangs from her forehead as she typed. How much sugar she liked in her tea, how many times she stirred it with her spoon. The way she crinkled her nose and gave a small, lopsided smile when she role-played with Terezi, which rarely happened nowadays. Mostly, he could tell you how it looked as though she would never recover. She typed slowly, her chin resting on one small hand. She took an hour to drink one cup of tea, and always left half of it behind. She rarely ate, and spent a lot of time sleeping, which would be adorably cat-like if she didn't look so utterly lost and forlorn most of the time.

It had gotten so bad that Karkat actually sought out Dave, whom he usually avoided like the Troll Plague. He asked him to keep her company, and surprisingly, he complied. Dave alchemized a pair of cat-eye shades, and the two quietly became good friends. Dave would listen to her as she told him about everything, and he kept her distracted with new "sick beats" and playing around with the alchemizer. Gamzee both hated and respected Dave, and made sure to keep his broken horn on him whenever he saw him. He made her happy, dammit, so he couldn't kill him like most of him wanted to. A small part insisted that he was extremely attractive, all lean muscle and smooth grace. He only indulged that small, annoying part late at night when Karkat didn't visit.

Soon, however, he would have to do something. He was reaching a point, some rolling boil deep inside, and needed a release of some kind. Any kind.


	5. Author's Note OH NO

ALAS, dear readers!

I'm sorry to say I have hit a writing block the size of Mount Doom.

Mostly, my depression has come back with a vengeance, and every time I sit down to write something I end up pushing away my laptop with tears and frownies.

Obviously, this is not conducive to writing.

I'm trying to pound out (giggity) a rough storyline of how I want the rest of this fic to go, and once that's done hopefully I'll be able to flesh it out (also giggity) more and get it uploaded to you guys. I'm going to take a week per chapter, and that should get the story out and finished in a quick yet cohesive way.

Thank you so, so much for reading my story and liking it. Whenever things get really hard I re-read all the wonderful reviews I've gotten and it always makes it better.

As always, thanks for sticking with me.

Nanrz


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